


But Beautiful Fruit Can Come From A Black Tree

by metaphoricallylivin



Series: Earth 25: Oh, Yeah I'm An Ugly Mess [16]
Category: DCU
Genre: Coming back to life, Grief/Mourning, Judaism, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 13:24:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11487300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metaphoricallylivin/pseuds/metaphoricallylivin
Summary: Sleep, child, they’ve already risen, the stars.No one can know what will come of their fears.Both he whose heart’s heavy, and he whose is light,We all grow from within, like a tree in the night.-Yisroel Shtern





	But Beautiful Fruit Can Come From A Black Tree

**Author's Note:**

> TW for drowning, death, the Holocaust, and mentions of homophobia and transphobia. Also this fic contains heavy religious imagery. 
> 
> The title and the description quote comes from [this](http://www.yisroelshtern.org/poetry/english/lullaby%20for%20a%20jewish%20child%20in%20germany.pdf). Honestly the whole poem is a gift and it is so good.

Toby didn't breathe, he choked. Lazarus water flooded his lungs. He had died choking on blood and he was still choking, though the water burned his lungs and his throat. He felt the pit stitch together bones and heal open wounds. His body remembered how to fight, how to live, after he'd breathed in the waters and choked on it. He thrashed in the water before managing to find the edge.

 

He didn't understand where he was he, he wasn't home. This wasn't Gotham, the green liquid sloshing beneath him wasn't home. It burned and it clouded his mind. All he felt was anger.

 

The next time he was awake Jason’s there. The white streak of his hair was falling into his eyes. Toby didn't say anything, his brain felt like it’d been put through a blender and he didn't know what to do. He fell asleep again.

 

It's three days before Toby’s mind cleared, the anger lifted slightly and he put it together. His mother had killed him, he'd died. He was in a compound in a far away place with Jason and Talia and a woman he didn't recognize. A woman who had access to a Lazarus pit and looked at Toby like he was ghost, like he was a reminder of someone she'd cared for and remembrance and forget were equally painful options.

 

* * *

 

The headline sat on the table, practically staring Tim down. He looked at it like it had slapped him. 

 

_ Red Robin Grows Increasingly Violent _

 

Tim had beat the shit out of a pedophile, the man had preyed upon children and Tim had beat him bloody and people were criticizing him. They were acting like the man hadn't exploited and hurt children, like he was a saint. Tim balled the paper up and threw it into the recycling. Kon and him hadn't talked in almost a week and everything felt shallow without Toby. Jason hadn't returned and everyday Tim begged for closure.

 

Athanasia had become Cardinal a few days after Toby’s death. She was patrolling with Dick and she was working on her anger, she'd somehow fit into the family perfectly. She was going to be an incredible hero and she was already halfway there, she'd been working with Batman and Robin and as a result garnered a slight popularity. People were asking where the old Cardinal was, they were worried about what had happened to him.

 

Vicki Vale had asked Tim, as Red Robin, where the original Cardinal was and Tim had frozen. He'd almost forgotten Toby was dead and his body had reacted like he'd been hurt upon being reminded and not for the first time Tim felt like the weight of existing was crushing him. He didn't answer. He used his grappling gun to leave.

 

It'd been almost two weeks since Toby’s death when Tim realized maybe hope was lost. Maybe Jason and Talia never would bring Toby back. That he would stay dead forever. The idea made Tim’s stomach drop and he refused to entertain it, it would never be true. Toby would come back. He'd come home.

 

* * *

 

The woman was Talia’s sister and Toby’s great grandmother. Her voice was heavy and she talked so much about how he looked like her son, Toby’s grandfather. She said that other than the red hair their looks were the same. Toby bit his lip and didn't say anything, the way she looked at him made sense now. There was a reason why she looked at Toby like he was someone lost, someone she never expected to see again.

 

Growing up Toby had never known much about where he came from. He'd always envied other people who could talk about what their extended family was like. He didn't know his mother and his father was a nightmare of a person. Toby had once tried to use one of the ancestry websites, but after his grandparents hit a wall. He gave up.

 

Nyssa was real though, she looked to be in her late 30s, but had lived since the 1800s. She visited him often, watching him train and fight against Jason and Talia. When she thought he was asleep she'd whisper soft words in Yiddish to him and Toby’s chest felt like it was too small for all his feelings, like his heart was exploding. Toby didn't say anything, he let her think he was asleep because he'd learned that good things never lasted. That no matter how strong he was one day it would change, that he wasn't good enough.

 

After almost a month Talia left. She had business back in Metropolis and she said she'd stayed for far too long. Toby nodded and when she left he turned to Nyssa.

 

“Tell me where I’m from. I want to learn.”

 

* * *

 

_ There was once a girl. She didn't know her father, but she loved her mother. Every saturday they'd walk from their home to the synagogue and they'd pray. She remembered watching as the Torah came out. She learned how to fight when she was 12, from her mother.  _

 

_ She became a warrior, she was a better fighter than everyone she knew and she was smarter. Her mind was sharp enough to cut steel. She was beautiful inside and out and amazing in every way, inside and out and it showed. No one could top her and she knew it. _

 

_ Her mother died when she was 17 and she left. She wanted to find her father so she walked, she walked and she walked. She wanted to find the man, Ra’s al Ghul, the one her mother had always told her about. She remembered her mother talking about how her dad would be so proud of her, how he'd love her just as much as she did. _

 

_ So she wandered and she wandered, she felt the air get hotter and the world chang. She learned how to speak different languages and she learned how to fight better. She became a woman who could best anyone. She found her father. _

 

_ Impressing Ra’s al Ghul was not easy, still she did it. She was given a place by her side, one her sister would one day hold. She learned from him, becoming his eventual successor. She was promised everything and she deserved it. _

 

_ After 60 years of working with him, gaining his trust and respect and even love, he told her his plan. He planned to rid the world of those he deemed undeserving of living in it. He wanted to rule the world. Nyssa didn't want that, she didn't want that. She didn't want to end the world so she left. Her father let her keep a Lazarus pit for herself, thinking she'd never be able to use it. _

 

_ She was able to use and she was alive for 60 more years before she found a sense of peace. She had a family she loved, her husband was gay like her. They were both Jewish and loved their three children. Still one day they were taken from their home, moved to a ghetto, then a concentration camp. _

 

_ She sent her son away in the beginning, she wanted him to live. She remembered holding Tovy close as her 7 year old son cried into her shoulder before he boarded a train to England, then America. She didn't see him again for 20 years, by then he’d been a soldier, then a spy. He was so different than she remembered. She only saw him two other times before his death in 2000. _

 

_ He was her last child. She remembered being tied to a table and a man experimenting on her, him telling her that her kind bred like lice. That they weren't worth wasting anesthetic on. That they made humanity weaker, if he'd known what she was, how strong she was, he would've regretted what he'd said. She would've killed him with her bare hands. _

 

_ She never told him that his grandfather had never tried to help them. That Ra’s al Ghul was okay with the Nazis because he thought it would make things easier for him. That he let Tovy’s sisters die. That he let 6 million Jews die. _

 

_ Her granddaughter named her son after her father. He was born 3 months after her father’s death with messy red curls and wide eyes. He was destined to become a tool of his mother and by extension Ra’s, but he chose his own destiny. Nyssa was proud of him for that, she knew how hard it was to refuse the will of a parent. It had been deadly for him. _

 

* * *

 

Tim flew. He jumped and spun. He felt empty, but the city was his job. He needed to keep these people safe, he needed to be smart, smarter than his enemies. Any weakness was exploitable so he couldn't be weak. People noticed that Red Robin was becoming more ruthless, that he left people bleeding more.

 

He and Kon talked less, the space between them growing bigger than the several thousand miles between them. They mourned in their own ways, Tim throwing himself into being a vigilante and Kon staying silent. They didn't know how to talk about it and death hung heavy in their relationship.

 

For the first time in almost two years Tim visited his parents’ graves. First he went to Bruce, telling him about how much he loved Toby and how much it hurt to lose him. He flipped the stone over and over in his hands, before finally bending down to place it on his grave. Janet and Jack Drake’s graves were less well kept. He removed the grace creeping onto the flat plaques. He didn't say anything to them, his parents hadn't been a permanent fixture in his life until his mother died and his father found out he was Robin. Even then, there wasn't a permanency to any of it. They weren't good parents, they loved him, but his mother had been homophobic and his father had never been able to accept he had a son. They wouldn't have liked who he’d become. Still he left a rock on their graves.

 

Toby didn't have a grave, but Cass and Duke had helped Tim set up a small memorial of sorts in the Robin’s Nest. It had Toby’s costume hung up, every part of it from a pristine copy except for the ripped mask. Cass and Duke would sometimes sneak in, talking to the mask about how things had gone. Tim pretended he didn't know about it.

 

He'd picked up his phone to call Toby about a finished invention or a breakthrough he'd made in a case more than once. Tim always loved to gloat to his boyfriends whenever he did something well, but every time two seconds into the phone buzzing he'd be reminded no one would pick up. He would never hear Toby’s voice outside of recordings ever again.

 

* * *

 

Jason and Nyssa left for a place Toby did not know almost two weeks after Talia left. Toby was put in the hands of Nyssa’s lieutenant, Misha. He didn't talk much, but he watched Toby fight. He had the fire and strength of someone who had been through hell and come through stronger. It reminded Misha of Nyssa.

 

Toby practiced things with a single minded determination. He hit hard. Misha sparred with him several times, watching his movements. They were more fluid, more effortless than anyone other than Nyssa’s.

 

“Do you know Russian?” Misha asked.

 

Toby shook his head. “I'm decent in Yiddish and Jason taught me some Arabic, but I don't know Russian.”

 

“You should learn if you wish to join ranks,” Misha said.

 

“I don't know if I will,” Toby said.

 

“Join or learn,” Misha asked.

 

“Join,” Toby said.

 

Nyssa and Jason returned a week later, Nyssa made Toby tea and they sat together and talk.

 

“Jason is returning to Gotham,” Nyssa said, sipping the strong tea and watching as Toby dumped three spoonfuls of sugar into his with a slightly raised eyebrow.

 

“I know,” Toby said.

 

“I have a place for you here. I’ve always valued family and you are part of my family. Toby, I know what it is like to go through the Lazarus pits and I can help you,” Nyssa said.

 

“I have people back in Gotham, they deserve to know I’m alive. I will visit them and make my decision,” Toby said.

 

“I've killed my father, Jason killed your mother. I am going to change the League, better it. My father used to say everything he did was for the greater good, but there is no greater good than family and he betrayed his. I once told him that I needed to find my own way to add to the greater good. Genocide never leads to a greater good, I know this. You know this. Tikkun olam creates a greater good, if you want to help me repair the world I would love your help, tatala,” Nyssa said.

 

“I’ll think on it. Thank you, Nyssa, for everything you've done," Toby said. 

 

“Before you go I have a gift for you. Your Magan David was damaged by the pit. It was the same one I gave to my son, he must've given it to your mother before she gave it to you. I want you to have a new one,” Nyssa said, handing Toby a small box.

 

Inside it was a simple Magan David and a thin box chain. Toby took it out and carefully put it on, fiddling with the clasp for a few seconds before getting it to work.

 

“Thank you,” Toby said.

**Author's Note:**

> Tikkun Olam is charity and such to repair the world, it is a lot of what the Superfam's actions are based in since they're Space Jews. Yiddish is a mix of Hebrew and German frequently used by Ashkenazim. 
> 
> As always comments are loved.


End file.
